


At Winter's Midnight

by Kayndred



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allusions to Brainwashing, Allusions to Fratricide, Allusions to killing at a young age, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Following episode 7, Blood, Day 6: Galra!Keith/Dark!Shiro, Everyone else is the same, Fighting, Galra Keith (Voltron), Galran Society is Fucked UP, Guilt, Just Galra Keith, M/M, No tentacle Robeasts, PTSD, PTSD is not experienced by POV character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Red Paladin Allura, Sheith Week 2016, Sheith Week 2016: Fight Me/Love Me, Sheith Week 2016: Flashback/Reality, Sheith Week 2016: Hurt/Comfort, Sheith Week 2016: Together/Alone, Sheith Week 2016: Training/Playful, Slow Burn, Sort of? - Freeform, To clarify, but so fun to write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-08-24 09:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/Kayndred
Summary: The capture is an accident. [Or: Wherein Galra!Keith finds himself the war prisoner of the Voltron Squad, and both sides find themselves confronted with ideas they weren't expecting.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Sheith Week 2016, and also my own world building/non-chronological drabble exorcise. Also I'm behind!  
> Day 1 (22nd) Hurt Comfort

The capture is an accident.

He wakes up in a cell, stripped of his pilot suit and cuffed to a magnet-chain that lets him occupy all of his prison. He imagines that when they come to interrogate him it won’t be so lax.

He takes assessment of himself, but finds only the wound to the back of his head - delivered by the Altean, if he remembers correctly. A solid blow. It could have killed him, if it hadn't been tempered by restraint. 

.x.

“Shit, he got you good, huh?” Lance asks, watching Coran work on a series of tiny, precise stitches on Shiro’s tricep. It’s definitely going to scar, although it probably won’t look much different from the rest of the skin around the prosthetic. 

Shiro nods, fighting back a wince - the cut is deep but not wide, the Galran pilot’s claw having cut through him like butter. Coran had been impressed at the evenness of the edges of his skin, even if he’d looked green. “Good thing we knocked him out before he went after anyone else.”

His ship had crashed, one of its wings slashed to pieces by Pidge, and when they’d landed to investigate, after the rest of the Galrans had retreated, he’d come up swinging, gloves off and claws ready. 

Only the shielding in their suits had protect Hunk from his short dagger finding a home in his head. 

It had been four against one - five, once Allura landed - and they’d overpowered him eventually, but none of them came away unscathed. Shiro was the only one who needed stitches - he’d been closest to the ship when the Galran had leaped out, and the first thing he’d done was go for Shiro’s right arm. 

“What are we gonna do with him?” Hunk asked from where he was applying a cold patch to Allura’s side. She’d been the one to go toe to toe with him and deliver the finishing blow, but not before he’d turned his aggression her way.

It’s a question Allura has been mulling over, if Shiro’s got any proficiency in reading her expressions. “Keep him for interrogation, use him as a bargaining chip. Solo pilots are somewhat of a commodity to the Galra Empire, he's probably important.”

.x.

He doesn't move when Shiro comes down later, not even a twitch of his large, tufted ears. His eyes are golden slits in a violet face, haunting, and it's only through his time as a captive that Shiro can tell that the Galran's attention is on him. 

"Your food." He says. The Galran doesn't move.

It's still unnerving, seeing them, the Galrans, Sendak, sometimes. He expects things - words, actions, sounds - and often in battle he doesn't find them. He expects more recognition as the Champion, equal parts fear and anticipation. He knows what to expect when they think they know what they'll get out of him. There are no tells on this one, no tics that would give it away, to show its hand, whether or not it has one at all. 

Looking at it, him, sitting in the far corner of its cell with its wrists crossed, stone still and silent, he's unnerved.

He shouldn't have come.

"Here." He says, and is proud that his voice doesn't come out any way besides bored. He passes a hand over the shielding that separates them and it vanishes. He puts the plate down just inside. "You'll be fed twice daily, and taken out between each meal."

" _Tiltak, nanan thanh hamun._ " _I am not a pet, worm._  It makes muscles in Shiro's back twitch, the Galran sharp and cold. There's a hum from the room, and when the prisoner speaks again it's translated. "I will not be lead about like some _dog_." 

.x.

The Paladin leaves, after that. It's a cold comfort that brings Kāthakkan nothing but a bitter type of satisfaction, a modicum of power in a place he despises on principal. For a time he even ignores the food the Paladin brought him, but his stomach is cramping with hunger and he can't deny the fact that they didn't have to feed him.

Zarkon knows they don't feed their prisoners. They also don't leave their prisoners in isolation very often - clothed or not.

He brings himself to his feet and eyes the plate on the floor, covered in unappealing green ooze and not at all appetizing smelling. Hesitatingly he crouches down before it and dips one finger into its gelatinous mass, nose wrinkling when it releases more of its awful stench.

His stomach balks a moment after he's swallowed down, the ooze rising back up into his mouth with the sting of bile close behind. He spits it back onto the plate, disgusted. 

Maybe this is torture. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are turning out to be remarkably chronological, who knew *eye rolls*  
> And I changed Keith's Galran name bc I'm still working out how I want inheritance and lineage to work in this 'verse.  
> Day 2 (23) Together/Alone

Kāthakkan does not often dream, not in the way he's heard some of the lower soldiers talk of it.

There are no fantasies in his head, in his heart - things that are beyond his reach or places that do not exist. There are only memories, soft and distant, and sometimes they replay across the canvas of his mind.

.x.

_One of his first memories is of a strong clawed hand scratching his ears._

_He remembers the thrum of his tiny body purring in contentment, an answering hum shaking him in response. It it warm, then - later it will be cold, and there will be others, but then it is warm. He is small, and even the dullest lights in the chamber hurt his eyes, but he can smell and he can hear._

_Below him, around him, a strong, deep beaten rhythm echoes._

.x.

He wakes up all at once, one ear pressed to the floor of his cell, where he had fallen asleep listening to the tiny internal hummings of the castle. Through the floor panels he can hear - or feel, it's difficult to distinguish at such a low level - the footfalls of someone approaching. 

It's the Black Paladin, he knows. He doesn't know  _why_ it's the Black Paladin - the 'Champion', for all the good it did him - but it is. 

One never quite loses the tread they gain when they enter the arena. 

He lets his eyes slip shut, already tired from an interaction that has not yet happened. 

One day the Altean princess will come to visit him - that is when he will begin to care. The Black Paladin is nothing, not even with his Galran arm, which, Kāthakkan thinks, he has no finesse using.

 _It is not a club to be wielded by some_ alien,he grouches to himself, remembering their fight with a frown.  _He understands nothing of its intricacies. Haggar will be **most** upset._

That, at least, brings the twitch of a smile to Kāthakkan's lips. He can't wait to tell her how the human fumbles with her creation. She had been so fond of it, after all. 

.x.

When Shiro enters the holding area the Galran is asleep on his side, back to the wall. He doesn't move when Shiro pauses in front of the shield, debating his course of action for several moments. He breathes silently, and deeply, the process so slow that Shiro has to watch for several seconds, unblinking, to make sure their captive hasn't died.

"Are you awake?" He asks. How do you wake up someone you've captured and is technically a prisoner? Someone who's injured you and your CO and your friends? 

Someone who reminds you of everything you hate, about yourself and about the fight your facing?

"I want to talk to you." He says instead.

The Galran doesn't move, not even to speak, but Shiro can see one golden eye slit open, electric in the dark.

He stays silent.

"Well, here then." Shiro says, vanishing the shield. He sets a plate down on the inside of the cell before seating himself, his legs crossed and his back against the slight divide that prevents the cells from being viewable to one another. 

He digs into his own dinner with gusto, tired after a day of running training exorcises. Even now, several battles after they caught the Galran pilot, the fight simulator still beats them with his copy, even on one of their lowest settings. 

_"He's a vicious fuck, huh?" Lance had said, panting, hands braced on his knees. The robot that played the roll of their captive - smaller than the Gladiator but wicked fast and armed with more than one blade - stood idle before them._

_"I can't believe this is what Zarkon has up his sleeve though." Pidge said from her sprawl on the floor beside Hunk. The two of them had been 'killed' last, by dint of working as a unit, rather than how Lance, Shiro and Allura had been fighting. "If his drones were like this we'd be dust already for sure."_

_"Agreed." Allura, then, stretching against one of the walls. "Which proves that we must better ourselves against this iteration of our opponent so as to be ready for those that follow. I doubt all the Galran pilots are so small and easily overcome."_

_Lance and Hunk had snorted in tandem, ready to fall into the groove of an a playful argument that had recently sprung up - Lance and Hunk claiming that the reason Allura had 'bested' their captive so easily was because they'd worn him out, Allura countering that if that were so then they should have no problem with the robot._

Shiro smiles at the memory, even as his attention is drawn to the very topic of their earlier conversation. The pilot moves, gracefully and preternaturally, until he stands beside the plate, eyeing it with disdain.

"You mock me." He says, burning gaze turning to Shiro. "You call this food but it is not edible."

That... that is harsh. He hopes the Coran never gets wind of it.

"It's fine, you'll get used to it." He tries, smiling a little, ruefull. "We didn't like it either, when we first got here."

Golden eyes roll heavily in their sockets before returning to his face, one purple eyebrow ticked up.  _You **are**_ _as base and unintelligent as you appear_ , his face seems to say.

"It isn't that I must 'get used to it' to appreciate it." He says, and it's more than a little unnerving that his mouth doesn't move in time with the words Shiro hears. The translation voice for the holding cells is universally bland, but it doesn't take much to read the disdain in the Galran's voice. "It is that I cannot eat it. It is a vegetable dish, and full of fungi. Eating it would make me ill." 

That - Shiro hadn't really considered that. From the little he remembered about eating while being a prisoner, everyone ate the same thing: a high protein grey slop. He'd never seen the actual Galrans eat, and the drones didn't, so it hadn't even occurred to him that a real Galran might not be able to literally, physically process the food Shiro considered 'normal' now.

"Oh." The protein goop made a lot of sense now, if Shiro was thinking about the Galrans like a race of big, purple, bi-ped cats. 

He very, very carefully did not laugh. There would be time enough later, alone or with the group, and then he could give in to absurdity of  _that_ thought.

"Well, here, we can share." Hunk had been experimenting with one of the 'tributes' Allura had been given as savior-ambassador, a strange, rangy animal meat that Shiro wasn't sure he liked. Hunk had tackled it with gusto at first, excited about a new alien food to try, but when all his dishes came out relatively the same, he'd asked Pidge to try her hand at cooking combinations, hoping her fresh scientific eyes would shed a new light on his problem.

No such luck.

The Galran eyes him, speculative and wary. Shiro would be too - had been, when they'd started throwing food at him in his cell, confused about the sealed packages and what to do with them. His guards had laughed at him and his struggles to rip the packaging, not realizing that the whole item was edible, that he didn't have to worry about poisoning, then, because he'd won two fights and the crowd was warming up to him, chanting his name, his title -  _human, human, human hu-_

"Human!"

Shiro snaps away from the memory with a jerk, the Galran's face remarkably close to his. He startles, twitching back, and the captive moves away, frowning at him in consideration.

He hadn't tried to cross the barrier, despite the shield still being down.

Shiro shakes himself, fighting off the shivers that dance up and down his spine. "Here, sorry." He says, pushing the plate across the barrier. His appetite is gone.

The prisoner takes it, carefully replacing it with the green one, well within his reach and easier to eat by far. 

The silence stretches between them, broken only by the delicate noises of Galran eating. Shiro would be fascinated, the way the captive holds the slices of meat in his claws, the way he eats without mess, if Shiro himself weren't feeling close to throwing up.

As it is, he doesn't watch.

"Better."

The low voice drags him back to the present, away from the drifting emptiness of his thoughts. The plate the Galran is holding is clean, and he pushes it across the boundary with one wickedly clawed finger.

"Perhaps you are not as savage as I had thought." He says, sitting by Shiro against the wall. He doesn't look at him, his golden gaze turned up, away, and for that Shiro is thankful. 

It's hard enough being so close,  _willingly_ , he doesn't know if he could stay if the Galran looked at him.

"But whoever cooked your meal likely intended to poison you - that meat was not fit for a being whose stomach has so little acidity."

Shiro barks out a laugh, abrupt and almost unwanted, but the tightness in his chest eases a little then. 

The captive says nothing as Shiro eats his green goop, and nothing still when Shiro picks up their plates and walks away, but the eyes on his back are not cutting or heated, and that's enough, then.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one features plot and my 'not exactly a hymn but pretty gay anyway' song, based unashamedly after All That is Gold does not Glitter by Tolkien because I'm a massive fucking nerd. Finally catching up!  
> Day 3 (24): Fight Me/Love Me

" _He what?_ " Allura shouts, shocked and outraged. Her eyes are already darting over the security feeds, glaring in concentration. 

She's seething, but she's afraid, too - for her Paladins, for Coran, for the gentle citizens outside the castle. She remembers, vividly, the vicious look in his eyes, the snarl on his lips as he'd attacked her, attacked Shiro, thrown his dagger at Hunk. He'd been fast, so fast, lightning where other Galra were thunder. Who knows what the Galran captive will do to escape, or  _what_ he will do if he succeeds.  

She'd been afraid of him him then, too, of the claws that had parted Shiro's skin like it was nothing. She'd counted herself lucky to have bested him. He was  _formidable_.

And she was  _not_ letting him get away. 

"The Lion hangar!" She calls out over the intercom, alarms blaring, sensors flashing an unregistered heat signature moving swiftly in the large chamber. "I'm locking it down; Paladins, subdue him!"

She turns, grabbing her bayard as she goes. "Coran, you have the controls. _Trap him._ "

She barely hears the 'Yes, princess!' as she dashes off.

.x.

The alarms don't start going off until Kāthakkan  _stops_ touching the Red Lion.

It hadn't been his intention, getting sidetracked by the red robot. Yes, he knew stealing one of the Lions was paramount to Zarkon's plan, but Kāthakkan was more than a little cautious about jumping into a robot even its pilot barely knew how to control. It had just... called to him, a humming in his chest that had increased in pitch exponentially when he'd entered the hangar.

It was warm beneath his hand, and it sang to him like his blades did - not his pilot's dagger, but the ones that denoted his rank in the Galran military, the ones forged, supposedly, from parts of the heart of a star. He'd thought it myth, more likely than not, but the lion burned bright in his minds eye, a sun unto itself. 

_Looking searching hunting finding_

"What?" He'd asked, a whisper in the darkness of the chamber. He wanted to leave, to get out quickly, but his thoughts were racing. He could understand it, almost, the liquid images and feelings unspooling in his mind, a language without translation.

_Finding sighted spotted claimed_

The alarms would be raised soon, it was almost time for second meal. The Black Paladin would be... disappointed, at his absence. He didn't understand the sharp pinch in his chest at that thought, and dismissed it.

_Claimed ours mine one heart one mind **ONE**_

Kāthakkan jerked back, hand stinging, mind a mess of images and sensations, a headache already building behind his eyes. The alarms turned the hangar blinding red with their flashing, and he hissed. The blast doors at the far end of the chamber slammed closed, and Kāthakkan spared one more confused glance at the Red Lion before slipping into the shadows.

.x.

The prisoner attacks him from the shadows, wrapping one arm around Lance's throat in an iron choke hold.

" _Fuck - argh!_ " He cries out, prying at the arm and stumbling. The limb is gone as suddenly as it appeared, his breathing coming back with quick, agitated gasps. He spins to see Pidge, Shiro and Allura pinning him to the floor, Hunk with his bayard trained on the Galran's head.

"Jesus shit he's wily." Lance coughs, pulling out his bayard too. "Calm down, asshole!" 

The Galran just snarls something at him that the translator has trouble picking up, but it's guttural and nasty, like some over cooked green goo is stuck in his throat. Shiro, despite the situation, looks like he's trying not to laugh, and Lance embraces his outrage. 

"What'd you say to me you - you space punk!"

"Lame." Pidge chirps from where she's slapping cuffs and a collar on their prisoner. Even the Galran looks like he's supremely done with Lance's comebacks - but that could be just that he's pissed about being caught again, who knows. Lance isn't a Galra Facial Expressions expert or anything, and the guy sorta always looks pissed.

"Shuddup." He sniffs.

The Galran gives him a dead-eyed stare before pointedly rolling his eyes.

"You too, purple people eater! Don't make me turn you into a rug!"

.x.

Their prisoner is oddly quiet after his attempted escape. 

It lasts a long time, long enough that Shiro starts to wonder if something happened to him between the time he left his cell - which they're still trying to figure out - and when they pulled him off Lance in the hangar. He stops speaking to Shiro entirely, not that he did much to begin with, and he ate his increasingly repetitive meals without comment. 

It isn't until some time later - days; in fact almost a full two weeks - that Shiro hears him making any noise at all.

Sometimes, most of the time if Shiro's being honest, the Galran's presence is unnerving, but his ability to move about his cell without making any noise it the worst part of it. Lance had jokingly suggested fashioning him some kind of bell, like a real cat, which had prompted Shiro to tell them about his dietary needs, giving them all a good laugh at the idea of fighting purple space cats. 

But this is the first time Shiro's heard him before he's opened the door.

It sounded like rumbling, or purring, low and slightly off key. It doesn't stop when he walks further into the holding area, or when he sits down at his spot by the wall, two plates in hand.

The Galran has his eyes half-lidded, his lips barely parted, ears, for once, not forward facing and listening. 

He's singing, Shiro thinks belatedly. Singing, of all things.

It's nothing like human songs, to be sure. It doesn't really seem to have words, although Shiro isn't exactly versed in whatever might pass for 'lyrical Galran', if such a thing exists. The only Galran he'd ever really been exposed to was harsh, single word commands and longer, more detailed insults. He knows words of praise, 'go' and 'come here' and 'don't die', among others. 

The sounds coming from the prisoner are still rough, but once he starts paying attention they have a low, sonorous edge that makes the hair on Shiro's arms stand on end. There's a rhythm, too, like maybe he's repeating several lines, or a single stanza of something.

"Hey." He says when the Galran seems to be done. Yellow eyes meet his, calm and, if not unguarded, at least not antagonistic. His eyes are pure, flawless gold.

"What are you doing?" He asks, vanishing the shield and placing the prisoner's food in his cell. The Galran moves, quiet as the grave, and sits beside him. 

He's silent for a long time, eating slowly. He's never lied to Shiro, although he's refused to answer several times during interrogations, especially since his attempted escape. Everything he's told them has been true, and normally, to a degree, things they already knew. If he doesn't want to answer he won't, and he'll mock their 'pathetic attempts at torture' with the same snide, bored look every time.

There's no hint of that look now.

" _Alakesh Amhara Tulak._ " He says, deliberately slowly. The translator doesn't respond, and he smiles, a little smug. "It means, ' _The Battle of_...'" Shiro watches, fascinated, as he tries to find the words to pass through the translator. "' _The Battle of Tomorrow is My Heart_ ,' or ' _My Heart Battles Tomorrow_.' A kind of war hymn, I suppose."

That... wasn't what Shiro was expecting at all.

"How does it go?" He asks, turning slightly. This is the first time he's moved to face the Galran, the first time he hasn't sat facing the opposite wall, one eye on the door down the hall and the other on what he could see of the prisoner from his peripheral.

The Galran eyes him speculatively, golden eyes still half covered, one eyebrow slightly cocked. It's interesting, watching the play of his expressions - what little there is, even in the light of the cell. 

He seems to find whatever he's looking for, because he nods once, slowly, and closes his eyes entirely.

It's slow coming the whole way through, the Galran making sure he picks the right words for the translator to interpret. 

"A heart in war I have forged,  
I move forward in my path, alone;  
My blade in our battles has gorged,  
Our spirits in tandem will hone.  
With fire in our hearts we will be met,  
Our struggle in steel we will find;  
Your sword I desire without regret,  
And your blood I will have as mine."

There's a heat in Shiro's cheeks and his chest that he doesn't quite understand, and he feels like he might look a little gobsmacked because when the Galran opens his eyes he immediately rolls them and sighs, all exasperation. Shiro just blinks, struck into silence and unwilling to make more of a fool of himself.

"It's not perfect, not in your language at least. I did my best to make it as it is in mine, but there are always things that are lost."  _Especially in an alien tongue_ the quirk of his eyebrow says. His edge is back, the condescending sharpness that makes Lance lose it any time they interact between the cell and the interrogation room, or whenever they bring him out to relieve himself and Lance is lingering, looking for a fight.

Shiro thinks, privately, that Lance is as curious about their Galran captive as Shiro is, even if Shiro's own curiosity is tempered by a pervasive dread, a fear he can't shake. Even cuffed and eating the last of his meat slices in total silence, just looking at him long enough has a cold sweat prickling up along Shiro's neck.

"It was beautiful." He says, and turns away, measuring his breathing carefully.

After several long moments the Galran continues, in his native tongue, and Shiro briefly wonders if he tampered with the translator when he made his escape, because it doesn't try to translate whatever he's saying. But, for once, the unfamiliar Galran words don't send him into a spiral of memories, and it's a long time before he picks up their plates and leaves.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 4 (25): Flashback/Reality  
> Also ft. Family Relations Worldbuilding and viciously curious Keith eesh. It'll all make sense soon. Probably. Small progresses, friends.  
> This one will be edited more heavily when I've actually gotten some sleep. So, probably not till tomorrow.

_Kāthakkan only ever knows Zarkon as 'Zarkon', unlike most of his litter._

_He remembers being bigger, one of many. Words were tough in coming, then, but he knew enough to express himself, to articulate what rudimentary ideas a child might have about a world far more complex than they understood._

_"Z'kon!" He cries, excited at the sight of his imhath, and he runs as fast as his little legs will carry him, weaving carefully around the furniture in the room. He throws himself at Zarkon's leg, tiny claws sinking into the fabric there, eager to scale and climb but knowing he mustn't. "Kill't a big bug, Z'kon. Killt't!"_

_Zarkon lifts him by the scruff of his neck so that they are eye to eye, his claws hooked in Kāthakkan's tunic. "How long did it take you?"  Even without really touching, Zarkon's voice shakes him. He holds up one hand, frowning at the digits to make sure their right before turning his equally serious gaze back to Zarkon's great yellow eyes._

_"Good." Zarkon says, approval rumbling through Kāthakkan's bones. "Faster than the last one."_

_Kāthakkan beams, careful not to bare his fangs when he smiles."Gonna be th' fastest, faster'n Z'kon!"_

_Zarkon tuts, moving Kāthakkan to sit atop one of his shoulders, out of the way and leaving his hands free. Kāthakkan's fingers wind into the ornamental ruff there, seeking out the cool metal armor beneath. "We shall see."_

.x.

Kāthakkan has good hearing, sharp, even for a Galra. He can hear a great many things, and it takes work, sometimes, to narrow down to the thing he wants to focus on, especially if it's a soft noise, or far away.

The conversation down the hall is neither of these.

It's the short one who favors green, Pidge, he thinks, and the Altean. They'd been the ones sent to conduct this round of the interrogation, which, if Kāthakkan is perfectly honest, is pitiful. 

He never tires of telling them so, either, which makes it that much worse, in his mind. A captive shouldn't  _look forward_ to interrogation because of the change in scenery and the chance to walk more than fifteen paces in any direction. 

He sits in his not entirely uncomfortable chair, blatantly listening in on their conversation. They're down the hall from his room a ways, about twelve paces if memory serves, but with his hearing and their raised voices they seem to be almost in the same room.

"We should be pressing him about the location of the prisoner colonies! Of the places Shiro's ship orbited!" The short one. 

"I'm sorry Pidge, but we don't have the time! We have to know where Zarkon is moving his forces, not the locations of his captives!" The Altean, with an annoying edge of pacification in her voice. A well worn discussion then, if her tone is anything to go by. He can almost taste their frustration and the short one's bruised anger.

"If we make headway in freeing his slaves the other free planets will be more likely to back our cause! We'll be better known, our message will spread faster!"

"We don't have the resources. I'm sorry, Pidge, I am." A sigh - genuine regret on the Altean'so part. Interesting. "We barely secured Arus as a place of peace and welcome, and we don't have the supplies, the space or the man power to save a slave colony. We were lucky that the Balmerans didn't need to be relocated and that the Balmera itself could provide the healing its people needed."

No words, then, but a space filled with heavy breathing. The short one, whose breath is thick with emotion, strong enough to strangle.

"I understand." She says, but there's a bitterness there that Kāthakkan wants to pull apart and see, know, analyze. 

There are several beats of silence, and a shift that he has trouble placing - a rustling, a movement. A hand on someone's shoulder? The Altean?

"Are you ready?" The Princess asks, and the Paladin must give some kind of silent confirmation, because their footsteps move down the hall.

The interrogation room opens with a swish, and the short one steps through first. 

"What can you tell me about your slave colonies." She demands, eyes hard in the castle's light. The Altean, barely through the door, closes her eyes.

 _I, too, pray for fortification_ , Kāthakkan thinks, looking at the determined lines of the young warrior's build. Straining, angry, hungry for knowledge. 

He blinks and sighs, and motions to her to sit across from him with a tilt of his head.

She does so without aplomb or grace, too riled and holding on to the feelings that made her defy her commanding officer to be anything but. 

When they sit he says nothing, however, just looks across at her with the same sharp, assessing look he gives the  _hatchka_ of his home planet, wary of the poison claw hidden in their tails, of the strength of their jaws and the quickness of their strike. Fierce, and hard to tame, but loyal to family above all else.

"You remind me of a _hatchka._ " He says, and her eyes narrow, jaw clenching. Even the Princess looks guarded. 

He doesn't clarify if it is a compliment or not.

He says nothing else, content to while the time away waiting. The Princess has stepped aside for this round of questions, he thinks, and his guess is confirmed when she does nothing to break the silence. 

But if the green one thinks she can outlast him in any game of patience she is wrong. 

No one moves up the Galran military ranks without the ability to stare into space for cycles on end, waiting for a word, a command, to reach out from the void and bring direction. Kāthakkan can wait. He's good at it.

"Tell me about your slave camps." She spits at last, the hand that wields her bayard glowing where it rests on the table. Kāthakkan has first hand experience with that weapon taking his legs out from beneath him  _and_ wrapping around his neck like a vice - he eyes it with disdain.

"There are many, across the galaxies..."

.x.

_“Your son is a runt.” Haggar sneers. She stands in front and to the right of the sleeping lounge, gaze directed out into the stars. She is a tall, dark figure in his mind - even now, years later and with several hand spans on her, Haggar remains a shadow. He doubts there was ever warmth in her._

_“He survived.” Zarkon states, yellow eyes sliding slowly to her reflection in the glass. Her lips twitch, but she remains silent. Kāthakkan pretends to sleep, practicing._

_It is true, though - Kāthakkan is a runt, but of his litter, he is the only male that lives. His sister, older only by a few ticks, has already bested her two siblings. Her body is warm against his, and he is young enough that he can’t yet tell if she, too, is feigning sleep._

_“Will you keep them both?” Haggar asks after several moments. They are five and one half now, and the last. Zarkon could have kept them all, if he’d wished._

_“No.” He decides, and his voice is a rumble, the engine of a ship at warp, enveloping Kāthakkan in sensation. “No, there can be only one.”_

.x.

"Where would they send human slaves?"

Ah, and that is the question, isn't it?

Kāthakkan has been talking for a good half hour about the conditions of the slaves the Empire takes, the planets they use them to harvest, the system by which they are sorted. It's a logic based structure, the entire machine of it: those who show exceptional potential go to the arena; those who are strongest go to the mines. The weaker ones, the ones more like the Paladin and her human counterparts, they would go...

"If they are strong, possibly the mineral mines. For our metals." He explains, slowly, with a contemplative edge that borders on condescending. She's close, so close, it won't take much at all - "If they are weak, a harvest planet. And if they prove too weak for even that..." he's ready, feet planted, perched, and she's strung, wound tight, just  _a little more_ , "we kill them."

Pidge lunges at him with a roar, bayard out, leaping over the table between them - he pushes the chair back and falls to the floor, rolling the instant he connects with the ground, gathering is legs beneath him. She regains herself quickly, fury-adrenaline pushing her faster, and she turns on a dime to attack him, weapon whipping out to cut the gap between them. But he won't fall for that again. 

He jumps. 

Over her and over the fallen chair, from one end of the room to the other, landing in a crouch that he regrets the moment Allura plants her foot between his shoulder blades and forces him down, the edge of her bayard at his throat. The sole of her boot slides to the back of his neck, planting him face first into the floor. He doesn't doubt that some part of her enjoys it, even if she will look back on their position and see shame in her actions.

Sometimes one can find a spark of Galra even in the most unlikely places. 

"Stop." She snarls, and it's not just directed at him.

From where Kāthakkan's face is pressed against the floor he can see Pidge, panting and shaking, shoulders pulled up to her ears. He can smell her rage and the salt of her angry tears, and if he focused he might even hear the bones in her hands shift on the handle of her bayard.

"It is only the truth." He says, voice warped by the way his cheek is pressed against the metal of the floor. "I have never lied." 

Pidge's angry screams follow his walk back to his cell, Allura's bayard at his neck the entire way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 5 (26): Training/Playful  
> Casual reminder that generous, generous time skipping happens in fic. I don't give time stamps, but even though these chapters turned out to be happening sequentially, they aren't one day after the next. I might go in and fill some instances that are mentioned but don't appear, but let's assume Keith stays captive for more than just 'a couple of days/two weeks'.
> 
> ALSO: I am so sorry for the lateness of this. Sheith Week came up right before I got my first midterm for this quarter, and I had to read all of Anno Dracula to catch up (interesting book btw), as well as weekly assignments for one class and a crap ton of reading all around. I'm also participating in NaNo again (or trying to) with some original fiction that I'll link to once it's done. But needless to say while I /have/ been writing Sheith Week things, they've all been in my notebook and not online, and those pieces are definitely not in any kind of logical order. This chapter just kept growing too, so on the one hand yay! more words! on the other - the following chapters are going to take even longer now that I've pushed into November. Cross your fingers everyone, I've got a lot of stuff in the air.
> 
> ALSO ALSO: This chapter, the next chapter, and the last chapter are the only ones that are actually, chronologically linked. They happen roughly in the same day - barring, possibly, the events at the beginning of this one and some of the events in the 7th.

"- and we're always losing." Shiro sighs, head tilted back against the cool metal divider between their prisoner's cell and the one next to it. He's just brought down the first meal after morning practice and he's aching. They'd only recently moved onto level two with the Pilot - what Allura had taken to calling the smaller practice robot when Lance wasn't calling it purple space trash - and it was kicking their collective ass.

The real pilot tilted his head, a concession of a sort, almost an acknowledgment of their hard work.

"It attacks but doesn't teach, correct?" He asks, slicing his meal into neat chunks with one claw. Shiro is very pointedly not watching.

"Yeah, it doesn't communicate with us." At least not with words - its steady stream of 'killing' blows made a pretty convincing argument against their supposed preparedness. 

The prisoner nods, as though he expected as much and wasn't surprised by Shiro's answer. 

"Perhaps...," and that's new, Shiro doesn't think their Galra has _ever_ hesitated in speaking his mind before. He turns his head, even though his eyes won't meet the prisoners.

"Perhaps it would be better to spar with an opponent who can instruct?" The Galran won't look at him, his attention turned to the far wall and its highest corner, so Shiro can't get a good look at his face. There's nothing there that's disingenuous, even though Shiro knows - _everyone_ knows - exactly what kind of ruthless mind and barbed tongue reside behind his placid face. 

Shiro's is struck into disbelief. Is the Galra really - ? Did he just offer - ? Did Shiro hear right?

Logically, Shiro knows it would be good, educational even, for the team to fight with a real person, someone willing to help and explain. The attack patterns of the Pilot are limited but fast and vicious, and even with the difficulty set higher everyone has become accustomed to the attack variations.

The problem comes from two different fronts: on the one hand, the Galra isn't exactly trustworthy. He's manipulative and cunning and, when angered, absolutely vicious. Shiro's seen the footage of his interaction with Pidge in the interrogation room, the way he played her feelings until she went for him. He also saw the way he bridged the gap between himself and the door in a single jump - they knew he was fast, they didn't know he could make jumps like  _that_. 

On the plus side, the ship's training room had pretty decent shielding, and if they had to they could always trap him in the maze. 

On the  _opposite_ hand, the only person on the ship who doesn't want to beat him to a pulp is Coran, and then only because Coran's scared enough of the Galran that he'd rather laser him to death than get within striking distance. Pidge want's his head for his actions in the interrogation room, and Hunk and Allura are equally enraged on behalf of her, as well as because of the frustration that's been building the longer he stays silent and obstinate during interrogations. Lance has been looking for a fight since the Galran passed over him in their initial fight, and still doesn't feel great after being jumped in the hangar. That the Galra readily snipes back at him anytime Lance makes a snide remark is just another way he's gotten under the Paladin's skin. And Shiro... well, there's no real telling what he'd do if the Galra came at him again. It'd been a surprise that had overtaken him at the crash site - he couldn't guarantee he wouldn't react on instinct in a different situation.

He knows the pilot can hold his own, but there's little doubt in Shiro's mind that emotions will run high the minute he's let loose in the training room.

The Galra is watching him now, just out of the corner of his golden eye, but his ears are forward. If he had a tail it might have been twitching.

Eager perhaps? Hopeful? Anticipatory? 

"It would be dangerous." He hedges, but the Galra just rolls his eyes, exasperated, and - yeah. Dangerous means something different between the both of them. 

"You fight like untrained children new to your weapon." He says, and there's not even an edge of disgust or condescension, it's just _fact_ to him. Shiro huffs, indignant, but the Galra cuts him off. "Be still, I know it to be true." He waves a hand dismissively, as though to banish Shiro's affront. "If one can communicate with one's instructor, one will learn faster."

Well...

.x.

"No!" Lance shouts, looking at Shiro in complete confused horror. "We'd die! Literally, we would all die. He would kill us." He drew his thumb across his throat with a squelching sound. "Kill us dead. No, this is a terrible idea."

"I agree," Allura says, frowning at her hands. "He is dangerous. We cannot take his word as a guarantee of honesty."

"But how will we find out if he's genuine if we don't let him try to be?" Hunk asks, a look on his face like even speaking those words makes him feel gross. Shiro can relate; every time he thinks of the Galra. free on the ship he sweats, his stomach full of prickling knots. 

"I want to spar with him," Pidge says, and Shiro has to take a moment to gather himself before he looks at her.

Her face is granite, but her eyes are fire. Her bayard glows, shape unchosen, and Shiro knows he's going to be doing more than spar with their prisoner - she's going to be coming for his head.

The memory of the Galra's first attack is still fresh in Shiro's mind and on his skin, the tissue raised and pink. In all honesty, Shiro doesn't know who he would be more afraid to fight: Pidge, rage ready and hunting for blood, or the Galra, manipulative and willing to maim, at least. 

"We have the ability to restrain him again if it gets out of hand." He says, thinking of Allura's strength, of the Gladiator, of the many training simulations they haven't tried yet. "Take it to a vote - all those willing to relocate the Galra captive briefly for a sparring session raise a hand."

Pidge's shoots up, a fierce look of determination on her face. She'll break into his cell and fight the alien there, Shiro is sure. He raises his own hand, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from lowering it again once it's up. No backing down, he has to be strong - he can face his fears here, in this controlled environment that is nothing like the arena. He can. He will.

He hopes.

Lance's hand goes up next, looking equal parts resigned and petulantly excited, a feat Shiro isn't sure he can manage. Allura rolls her eyes in exasperation, but her hand goes up the same time Hunk's does, and Shiro nods once.

"It's settled then."

.x.

"What should we call you?" Shiro asks as they walk the Galra from his prison cell to the training room. They have a blinder on him to prevent him from mapping his route, but Shiro doesn't know if it will do any good. He got as far as the lion hangar in his escape, after all, and he'd been knocked out when they'd moved him to his cell the first time.

"Kāthakkan." 

Shiro blinks, confused."What?" Keicha-what?

The look is back, or a variation of it - the Galra is thinking despairing things about his intelligence again. He can tell by the ears.

"Kei-thchak-kahn." Maybe it's the language barrier or a difference in phonetic something-or-others, but Shiro  _swears_ he hears 'Keethchakan', and he's pretty sure the Galra isn't even making a 'ch' sound. It's just a strange, double rumble noise in the center of his name like he's half a growl and half a word. 

"A shorter name?" He tries, and the pilot's shoulders twitch in what approximates to a sigh.

"Kāthiik. Kāth." He says, and Shiro tries to get his lips and tongue to coordinate enough to do _that._

"Keith?"  

"Close enough." The Galra - Keith, sort of - says, and Shiro has a moment to wonder how often a name like that gets bungled in Galran. Probably not a lot, all things considered, but this definitely doesn't seem like a new conversation for one of them, and it certainly isn't him.

 

 The first thing they do is put Keith in the training room with the Pilot, mostly to see how he'll react. Pidge stands like a statue in the observation deck, stone-faced while Allura ups the setting for the training 'bot, one hand on her bayard and one eye on the Galra.

"Don't kill him." Shiro says, trying for joking but not hitting it quite right. It's too serious - they both know it'll probably take more than one person to pull Pidge off him if she gets the upper hand.

She just snorts, promising nothing, and Shiro turns his attention back to the window and the Galra below them.

.x.

Their robot is a disgrace, and Kāthakkan is insulted and only marginally impressed that the castle got enough out of his ten-minute fight to make a droid that is only marginally competent. On the one hand, the castle's algorithm for fight patterns is impressive - he doesn't down his opponent in one move, after all. It's fast, not as fast as he  _can_ be, but fast enough to pose a challenge to the Paladins, apparently. He takes that into consideration. 

On the other hand, he had a little more faith in himself - if this is the way he was fighting when Allura downed him then he clearly had underestimated them, and he's ruefully disgusted at his hubris. Shameful. Zarkon would have him chained to a training room until he fainted for such a disgrace of warrior skill. 

He dodges the robot's bladed thrust by dropping below it and surges forward, grabbing it around the middle and tackling it to the ground. It fumbles on its back, unable to kick at the same height that Kāthakkan can, and he uses its clumsiness as a chance to move up and plant his feet on its shoulders. Wrapping his hands under its 'jaw' he twists and jerks, effectively dealing a lethal neck break and ripping the robot's head from its shoulders. 

"Your fucking machine is a piece of shit." He calls up to the group standing above him, tossing the robot's head from hand to hand. "I expected more from Altean technology."

.x.

"Choma temak etel nahn hante." Keith calls up to them, looking smug. The robot at his feet spits sparks from its neck, downed completely. The training room translator lags, "Your fucking machine is a piece of shit." Allura glowers instantaneously, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Keith's smiling around his next words like he knows he's poking a bear. The translation system in the room seems to deliberate a moment before completing his comment. "I expected more from Altean technology."

Hunk and Lance 'ooh!' and Lance whispers, "Are you gonna take that?" like they're in grade school and this is a sandbox fight. 

"No." She says, and there's a set to her shoulders that Shiro has learned means trouble.

She leans forward with careful deliberation and speaks into the comms. "We will spar first."

Shiro can hear Lance and Hunk whispering furiously to each other, something that sounds like betting, and Shiro fights the urge to face palm and ignore them for the rest of the training session. He hopes Allura doesn't beat their Galran too hard - Pidge looks more than a little ticked that she isn't getting a run at him first.

 

Keith instructs - in a manner of speaking. 

First, he gets Allura angry.

He dances around her, dodging her punches, her kicks - they've agreed on no bayards, this first session - until Keith has them 'better fit for handling something so important', his words not Shiro's. It's obvious at once that Allura isn't used to fighting, and even less used to fighting someone as experienced as Keith.

"Forget these limitations." He says, teasing but not mean. He pulls in close to her, almost touching, six inches inside her reach. She snarls at him, but Shiro is only listening to what the translator is picking up from Keith. "I am not one of your human Paladins, do not play games." He dips outside the motion of her strike, claws grazing the flank of her suit in passing. "And you insult me by acting this way. We are warriors, act like it." 

Allura's practically growling in frustration, her pivots and lunges sharper, but her strikes are wilder, more driven by her rapidly bubbling rage than by focus. Keith has her moving in loops in the middle of the floor, her temper clearly shortening the longer she continues to miss him. It's made worse by the fact that when she does get close it's intentional, either because Keith is taunting her or because he's correcting her form in the heartbeat of time between one of her actions and the next.

"What are you _doing?_ " He shouts, sliding beyond her reach, one foot, then two. He plants his hands on his hips, his entire stance open and unprotected. " _Hit me!_ "

 Allura screams and _lunges_ , and Keith goes down in a flail of limbs and hisses. From there it just gets dirty. They can't see all the blows being dealt, but they can see Keith roll the both of them, legs wrapped around Allura's middle and one elbow pressed against her sternum. They see her land several punches, they see her grab one of his ears and twist viciously, they see her brawl. Keith gives as good as he gets, and he even keeps his claws sheathed. 

It's Allura who ends it, flipping them with such abruptness that the air gets forced out of Keith's lungs. One hand wraps around Keith's neck, the other pins one of his arms into an awkward angle. They're both panting, from adrenaline and exertion, and Keith spends several seconds just laying on the floor before he taps the ground twice. 

"I yield." He says, and Lance and Hunk go wild in the observation booth, hooting and jumping and smacking each other on the back like they're the ones who just pinned their prisoner to the training room floor. Even Pidge looks smug, arms crossed over her chest and grinning. He doesn't doubt that she and Keith will still go at it like cats and dogs when it's finally her turn, but it the whole mood of the team feels lighter, more at ease.

Shiro smiles down at the training room where Keith is accepting Allura's hand in getting up, and breathes.

.x.

"Come at me furball, I'm fucking _ready_."

The blue one is definitely not 'ready', but Kāthakkan doesn't tell him that. He smirks, and within two minutes has Lance flat on his stomach, one arm twisted behind him, a foot on one shoulder.

"Yield?" He asks, and Lance just spits curses around 'okay.'

Keith lets him stand before he moves to adjust his form. "I am faster than you - and stronger. First, you must be on the defensive. Allow me to make my mistake first." His hands ghost across Lance's arms, shifting, and then down his sides, twisting his hips. He forces Lance's feet farther apart, and, satisfied, takes a step back. The human is very red. He files that away for later.

"You must become a smaller target in the hope that I will misjudge an attack. Here, we'll go again."

.x.

Pidge is... angry. Kāthakkan doesn't regret pulling on her emotions enough to say sorry, not when the reality of her life is that her family is likely dead. One should face those realities instead of hiding from them.

He does let her beat on him, though. He takes her anger and her confusion and her sadness in the form of punches, kicks, and, at one point, a tackle not dissimilar to Allura's. He resolves to be patient, even when she pulls on his ears, even when her rage subsides into hot, angry tears and they have to sit awkwardly on the floor because she has him in a headlock with her legs. 

"Your family would be proud of you." He says, looking at the tops of her boots. They are remarkably close to his face, but he won't say anything. She's stiff, like wood, and he can smell the salt of her tears. "You are a brave warrior. Small," she cuffs him, but he ignores that, too, "but fierce and loyal."

When she finally lets him up they don't look at each other, but he passes his hand over her head anyway, just barely touching her hair. She leaves and doesn't look back.

.x.

Hunk is a ranged fighter, like Lance, but he's cautious, which is a welcome reprieve. 

"Your weapon allows you distance, but not all your enemies will be so kind as to let you keep it." He says, standing within Hunk's reach. "Many of them are larger than me, but they may be just as fast. You have to be prepared."

Hunk absorbs his instruction like a sponge - he follows Kāthakkan's strikes with his own, mirroring them and repeating them until Kāthakkan is satisfied with his form. They run through two different basic routines until Hunk is confident in himself before Kāthakkan smiles at him and says, "Hit me."

"Are you sure?" Hunk asks. He's aware of his own strength and size in comparison to Kāthakkan, and he would appreciate it more if he hadn't been raised with instructors who'd never cared about the differences between teacher and pupil. He takes it as an acknowledgment of his own skill over Hunk's, and nods.

"As hard as you can. Hit me."

So Hunk does, all of his force behind it, and Kāthakkan takes the punch, moving with it and then under it, outside it, and Hunk stumbles with the force of his own swing. 

"We will work on your balance, too. A good strike, though. Again." 

.x.

Kāthakkan won't admit it to anyone but himself, but he's been waiting to fight Shiro again. He doesn't know what it is, and it's too vague as yet to analyze fully, but it's something he wants. It wasn't, after all, like he suggested sparring with the group out of the goodness of his heart.

Shiro steps into the training deck with confidence, loose and relaxed and, seemingly, ready. Kāthakkan doesn't remember much of their fight - it didn't last long, and wasn't much of a fight at all, really, just a slash and run - but he's been observing Shiro for weeks. It's time to test himself and see if he was right in picking out his weaknesses.

The problem, he finds, is that Shiro  _can_ fight, and he's used to being underestimated because of his species. He doesn't fall for any of Kāthakkan's lures, the little holes he leaves in his guard on purpose. He won't take any advances Kāthakkan sets up, and it's aggravating. He hates it. 

He stops playing.

They've been dancing around each other for ten minutes when Kāthakkan finally decides that enough is enough, he's done with teasing jabs and testing kicks. He wants to fight, to see how good 'the Champion' actually is. So he takes a deep breath and he jumps.

He's to Shiro's right when he does it, crouching down and coiling himself up only to spring above Shiro's head. He's fast, he knows he is, and the whole thing takes a breath to execute. He can see Shiro's momentary confusion and then he's on him, legs wrapped around his torso and twisting, bringing them to the ground. Shiro writhes below him, fighting the clamp of Kāthakkan's thighs, but he holds on. They roll, Shiro flipping them along the floor until he has his feet below him again. He's breathing heavily, though, and Kāthakkan can feel the tension in his shoulders, hears the whistle of his breathing as it goes through his nose.

There's a shift in him, one Kāthakkan only feels because he's got his legs wrapped around Shiro's neck. His muscles relax and his breathing evens out and Kāthakkan thinks he's going to yield, call it a day, when a dense purple light flickers to life and the hair along Kāthakkan's arms and neck stands on end. It smells wrong, this close,  _touching him._ It smells wrong and it makes his stomach roll and twist, and suddenly Shiro doesn't smell right either - Shiro smells like the training camps of Galra, smells like weeks of slogging through the jungle, smells like skin being peeled away, screaming, burning - 

Shiro reaches up with his glowing Galra arm and grabs Kāthakkan's thigh tight enough to bruise, his metal fingers digging into muscle and snapping him out of his memories. With a jerk he wrenches Kāthakkan from his perch, flinging him toward the wall with aggressive force, more focused than before, more dangerous. Kāthakkan tucks into a roll and spins, skidding on his hands and knees. He comes up just in time to catch sight of Shiro running at him, his arm glowing sinister purple and a particularly deadly blankness in his eyes. The snarl that twists his face is one of rictus satisfaction, and Kāthakkan doesn't have time to think before that same arm is slicing down toward him.

Kāthakkan breathes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 6: Galra!Keith/Dark!Shiro - both
> 
> Thank everyone so much for your patience and support! I had a lot of trouble with this chapter - it went through a lot of revisions - but I think I'm finally at a place where I can release it. Still not entirely _happy_ with it, but you've all waited long enough for this, and I really want to give it to you. (Plus I finally got to have the mom convo, which was originally A LOT LIGHTER WTF, but you'll see.)
> 
> If you're curious about what was occupying the majority of my time (besides school), check out [Paradigm Shift](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9384758), my (really really REALLY) late Sheith secret santa gift. See more at the bottom!

Shiro swings.

There's a moment where the air is still, charged - Kāthakkan's fur stands on end, his eyes dilate, his claws grip at the floor. Everything is both too slow and too fast - he can see the sweat move down Shiro's cheek and hear the arm whistle as it cuts through the air.

 _" **DECIDE.** "_  

Kāthakkan dives. 

His lunge takes him under the arc of Shiro's arm, diagonally, as far away from him as he can get with so little time. He lands outside Shiro's effective reach, mind racing, focus narrowing into a series of impulses, the next several moments of the fight unfolding in his mind. Landing on his hands he kicks out, catching Shiro in the hip and flank, sending him crashing sideways into the wall. He doesn't wait to see if he's hurt him, he doesn't have the time - he springs to his feet and sprints for the door.

Kāthakkan's fast, but he's winded and aching and out of practice, so when he feels a heavy force crash into his legs he's not surprised. He's pulling his knee up and kicking again as they fall, but Shiro catches his foot, flipping him when they hit the ground. 

The blank look hasn't left Shiro's eyes, but Kāthakkan can practically taste the sweat on his skin, can feel the heaving of his chest through where his arms are braced against the paladin's torso. They wrestle briefly, scrapping, the purple of Shiro's arm dimming as they roll across the floor. His breathing is coming harder, the sweat pouring from his brow, and Kāthakkan - tired and sore and bleeding from the weight of Shiro's fists - is willing to gamble with that. He sinks his claws into Shiro's thigh, pushing up against him in an attempt to scrape in air, but neither the pain nor the struggle of his captive registers to Shiro. 

"Fuck you, worm." Shiro growls at him in Galran. He's panting, right arm raised above his head like a club, and Kāthakkan narrows his eyes at him. 

" _Do it_." He spits, tilting his head back to bare his neck and simultaneously look down his nose at the paladin. He can feel Shiro's blood seeping through the fabric of his leggings and onto his hands. 

It's the conflicting signals that gives him an opening, Shiro's eyes moving fractionally over Keith's head and shoulders. HIs hesitation cements something that's been only a flutter of an idea in Kāthakkan's mind. 

With a lurch he rolls them, using his claws anchored in Shiro's leg to heave him to the side. He scrambles on top of the paladin, planting himself on his chest, left leg bent forward to slam a foot on Shiro's right elbow. He bends in half, taking Shiro's face in his hands, claws pushing against his skin, forcing eye contact. 

He doesn't speak, although there are innumerable things he could say in several languages alien to Shiro's ears. Instead, it's a rumble that grows in him, a tightly wound hum, so low it makes his breastbone tremble and ache. It's a gamble, a huge leap to make, and he doesn't know if it's even close to the right noise, the right pitch, but there's only so much Kāthakkan can do. 

Kāthakkan is knowledgeable of Haggar's manipulations, of the way she coerces and controls, but best of all Kāthakkan knows  _where_ she does her experiments.

The sound in Kāthakkan's chest creeps up, fueled by his desperation, and Shiro's eyes widen, mouth open on a snarl. He's stiff between Kāthakkan's hands, body rigid as stone, breathing gone from exertion-heavy to panic ragged. Kāthakkan hisses a breath out through his teeth, fighting to keep the noise deep, rolling from his stomach instead of his throat. Shiro's eyes flicker around his head, past his ears, to things Kāthakkan can't see. He fights for awareness, for consciousness, and his scent changes from battle-ready to desperate. HIs lips move, mouthing words in a language Kāthakkan has never heard before, but he knows a plea when he sees one. 

Carefully, hands still braced on Shiro's face, Kāthakkan leans down, in, eyes unwavering. His forehead presses against Shiro's and Shiro's eyes leap to his, wide and scared and bright. 

"The fight is over." Kāthakkan says over the pitched rumble in his throat, the closest approximation as he can create to the whine of the ship's engine from Haggar's lab. " _The fight is over._ It's time to rest."

Shiro fights it, fights the hum Kāthakkan pulls from his chest and the susurrus of words Kāthakkan murmurs against Shiro's skin, pressing his own blood against his face. 

"Hush, now..." he whispers, and as he speaks he loses track of when he switches from Galran standard to lyrical Galran, from lyrical Galran to the small collection of the Earth language he's picked up. He doesn't know if he's saying the words right, doesn't know if words like 'please' and 'come back' and 'this home, here home' have the same layers as those in Galran. What does it mean when his mouth shapes those words while Shiro's eyes flutter closed and his arm grows dull and metallic again. The tension leaves Shiro as he succumbs to sleep, and Kāthakkan closes his eyes briefly, hidden by his and Shiro's hair from the watching paladins, before standing.

"Someone come get him." He says, looking up at the observation deck. The doors open a beat later, all the paladins swarming, shouting and crying out. Kāthakkan drifts away, watching them gather Shiro's body up, ushering him out of the training deck. No one pays attention to the Galran in their midst, handcuffs him, tosses him a backward glance or a word. He could leave, walk freely among the halls of the Castle of Lions, escape.

No one would notice. 

Kāthakkan folds in on himself, knees to his chest and then out, the flats of his feet together, his hands sliding from his thighs to the space between his legs. 

There's silence, and it's tense.

There's silence.

Kāthakkan waits.

.x.

_"How's he doing?"_

_"Good. Healing - the pod registers high levels of tension and stress, elevated adrenaline levels, a slew of other chemicals."_

_"... When will he wake up?"_

_"I can't say. When he's ready, I suppose. His physical injuries from the fight have already healed."_

_"What did that Galran do to him?"_

_"Nothing - nothing beyond what we saw. The scratches, the punching, the kicks - all physical. I've reviewed the footage from the training room, and I can't pick out the words he says. I know he says something in Galran, several things, but - ..."_

_"But?"_

_"He spoke your human language. Briefly, I don't think he knows what the words are, but - in his own way, I think he called Shiro home."_

 .x.

To be honest, the Galran - Shiro called him "Keith" a couple times, but Hunk's pretty sure that's not his real name - kinda scares Hunk a little bit.

Okay, a lot. The first time he jumped out of his ship and attacked them, Hunk had been really and truly  _afraid_ of him. He was so fast, faster than any of them, and he didn't  _care_ about hurting them.

He'd wanted them dead.

That was probably the moment that Hunk realized that they were really at war. He'd known, of course, but until that confrontation it hadn't been in his face, he hadn't understood what  _alien_ meant. Allura and Coran almost didn't count - they were kind, they understood human language to an extent, and the castle translator systems helped them along. They'd even been starting to learn a little bit of Altean, just because Allura and Coran were constantly speaking it. It was easy to see them as _more_ than alien, as more than these fantastic foreign peoples that Hunk had really only known for a few weeks. Allura and Coran were aliens, sure, but they didn't look it. You could see humanity in their faces, read the emotions in their eyes.

 _Scientists believe the white of the eye evolved so people could see where other people were looking because direction is linked to emotional states._  

Galrans don't have eye whites. 

Galrans have fur and tough skin, pointed, cat-like ears, and claws on their somewhat human hands. Galrans have sharp teeth and dark tongues and they speak a language that Hunk doesn't think he can learn, just because most of it sounds like the prisoner is growling below his words everytime he opens his mouth. He tries to downplay the fact that the Galran freaks him the fuck out - the way it watches them, big yellow eyes unblinking, pupils impossible to discern in the light. He has sharp teeth, cat teeth,  _fangs_ ; his ears don't give anything away either, always moving with intent, and Hunk has yet to encounter him and not feel  _peeled apart_ with every glance.

Until today.

Hunk has been tasked with feeding the Galran while Shiro is recovering -  _hiding_ , Hunk has confided to Lance, separate from everyone,  _he's afraid of himself more, now_ \- and honestly? He doesn't want to. He'd rather have Pidge rig up some automated dumbwaiter and feed him that way, but it's safer, and doesn't provide him with an extra escape route. 

So it's his job until the chore wheel rotates, and Hunk has been bracing himself for violence or snide, semi-comprehensible comments since he started on lunch. The Galran had been helpful during their training, but that didn't make him any less  _terrifying_ , and maybe it had been his plan all along to send Shiro into an episode to weaken them, 'take off the head of the snake' if you wanted to be fancy.

By the time Hunk's at the bottom of the stairs he's worked himself into a fit of tremors, half righteously indignant and ready to defend Shiro, half ready to bolt if the prisoner is more physically aggressive. 

He doesn't announce himself when he gets within sight of the cell, and later he realizes he's glad for it.

The Galran is lying on the floor facing the energy barrier that keeps him from escaping (again). He has one ear pressed to the metal, his hands curled against his chest, eyes barely open to golden slits. He looks limp, almost, like someone threw him onto the ground and he stayed there, boneless. It's only once Hunk comes into full view that one of his eyes peels completely open, but slowly, like it takes great effort. 

"Dinner." Is all Hunk can make himself say, palming the control that parts the barrier. The Galran doesn't move - barely looks like he's breathing, honestly, but Hunk can't bring himself to get as close as he knows Shiro can. Close enough to pass the plate into the Galran's hand, Pidge says, eyes distant while she replays the surveillance videos in her mind. 

He slides the plate across the floor, careful to keep it at least from spilling over, but the Galran doesn't move. Hunk wants to leave, wants to turn around and go back up to Lance's warm laughter and Pidge's science and Allura's confused determination about Earth board games and learning their rules. It may not be the family he left at home up there, but there's something, and it's so much better than the feelings down here, the things that boil in him when he looks at their alien prisoner.

He doesn't know how long he stands there, how long the Galran looks up at him, both of them so quiet that Hunk can hear the huff of his own breathing and the faint rumble of the alien's.

"What did you do."

It's not what he wanted to say - he didn't want to say anything - and if he'd thought about it, he wouldn't have said that, not quite a question, not quite friendly enough to inspire an answer. He sounds - he sounds angry, even to his own ears. It's strange, how distant but how  _present_ it is. Fire beyond the protective cover of a glove.

But that glove burns away.

" _What did you DO!_ " He shouts, and the energy shield springs up, the lights in the cell block dimming. His fist comes up, striking the wall, sparking, and he wants to feel it through his gauntlet, wants to feel purple flesh give under his hand. " _WHAT DID YOU DO!_ "

Hot tears run down his face, off his nose and in his mouth. Everything is salt and anger. The Galran doesn't move.

Hunk loses track of what he yells, if it makes any sense, how many times he hits the shield that keeps the Galran in. He doesn't know when his throat goes raw, when his eyes start to swell and itch from the tears. 

The Galran just watches, one eye open, palm and ear pressed to the floor. His claws are dark against the pale metal.

.x.

Later, after dinner, after Hunk has lain in his bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, seething, he slinks back down to the holding cells. Bile has made his stomach and mouth bitter all night, and sleep eludes him. The hallway and the stairs down to the cells are dark while the castle sleeps, and he feels as though he's sneaking around. It should make him feel more guilty, doing something so out of the ordinary, but the fire from earlier has only burned itself deeper into his gut, embers covered by a fine layer of bitter ice. 

His footsteps seem too loud in the empty hall, but they aren't loud enough to cover the strange humming that carries up to him. The farther down he goes the more he can hear. The humming gains a rhythm, like a song.

There's only one place it can be coming from.

He rounds the corner slowly, head low and hands in the pockets of his pajama pants. He doesn't shuffle, the Garrison smoothed that out of his walk, but it's a close thing. The Galran doesn't stop, but the noise falters, lowers, trickles down.

Hunk doesn't know what he wants to say. There aren't any words boiling in him now, just feelings, shapeless things too tangled to pin down yet. He's angry, he's scared - the reality of this new life is weighing heavier and heavier on him. 

But the Galran won't have any answers. 

He sits down against the wall, back against the cool metal. In the dark the Galran is only a shape, a gentle curl against the floor. Hunk doesn't touch the shield controls, doesn't spread out in front of the area that's barred to him. He doesn't feel he can, even if he wanted to - his body is wound too tight.

The plate of food Hunk had brought down earlier hasn't been touched, if the way the Galran is lying is any indication. It's some consolidation that he's not the  _only one_ visibly distressed, but he can't even trust that, can't trust that what he sees with the Galran is the truth. 

Look what happened to Shiro, after all.

Sitting there on the floor, listening to the Galran hum to himself, Hunk feels adrift. There's no sense of time in the cells, no way to tell if they're moving through space or sinking into the ocean, no orientation. The entire universe could burn and no one tucked into this part of the ship would even know.  _He_ wouldn't even know. There's just the Galran, the humming, and him.

"What," the translator startles him, pulling him away from staring at the wall. Hunk can finally tell that the Galran is watching him; his eyes are wide and luminous, and Hunk can finally discern the gold pupil from the slightly lighter iris. 

"What is a 'home'?" The Galran asks, and it's not at all what Hunk was expecting - it pops into his seething bitterness and pulls honesty and confusion from the murk.

"It's where you want to live, I guess. Sometimes it's where your family lives." Home is his mother, dancing in the living room when he gets home from school; home is his sister, teaching him chemistry, making science projects in the garage; home is his dad, explaining a tattoo while they fix the roof, or fish one of his sister's earrings out of the sink. Memories make a home too, and Hunk has more than enough to drown in just then, but the Galran says, " _Family?_ ", human and strange coming out of his mouth.

"Yeah." Hunk says, pushing a hand through his hair to scratch the back of his head. "Uh, the people you live with. Blood relations, most of the time."

The Galran pushes himself up with his hands, head tilted, the entirety of his attention on Hunk. For once it doesn't feel like he's being pulled apart, like he needs to be ashamed of his humanity under that yellow gaze - it's just a look, and the Galran is just a space cat. 

It's a hard image to reconcile.

"Who leads this 'family'?" He asks, inching forward toward the energy barrier. Hunk frowns, and the Galran tries again. "Who is the commander?"

That's - telling. Awkward. "Depends on the family, I guess." He says, instead of analyzing that statement. The Galran is a big box full of confusing things, and right now Hunk doesn't want to think about  _aliens_ and  _difference_ and  _war_.

"It is not always the same?" The Galran is against the wall now, parallel to Hunk. "How big are your family?"

"Families," Hunk corrects, "and I dunno," the Galran has very intense eyes, so he looks away, "some are pretty big. I think the average is like two kids? Maybe three? And parents." At least in immediate families. Hunk doesn't want to bring in the complications of grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles just yet, not when the Galran is looking at him like he's sprouted a tail.

"Your families, they retain whole litters? They do not reassign them?"

What the fuck.

"What? No!" Hunk looks back at him, trying to find the deception, the derision, but there are only two big yellow eyes looking out at him. In the dimmed lights his fur is black, the insides of his ears barely purple. Only the delicate detailing on his black flight suit stands out, violet and stark. He looks like something caught between dream and nightmare. 

"If they can, a family keeps all their children. Parents work really hard to give their kids good lives - my mom had two jobs while my dad was away." His dad had been working, too, but he'd been across the country, shuffled around by his job. It was his mom that he'd seen splitting the day between her children and her shifts at work, smiling even when they knew she was hurting. The memory makes him ache - she wasn't one to let her worries out, but what would she do when the Garrison finally came up with a story about where he went? 

The Galran's ears swivel forward, and what he says next jolts Hunk out of his memories and into incredulousness, because,  _what the fuck?_

"What's a 'mom'?"

.x.

Kāthakkan doesn't know why Hunk is down with him instead of sleeping, instead of being with the other paladins. He doesn't know why they're talking at all, beyond that Kāthakkan didn't want to be yelled at. He was already so full of dark, twisting feelings that he couldn't make himself eat, he didn't want Hunk's angry-scared yelling drowning out everything else again. Hunk's outburst had only dug deeper furrows in the rut he'd put himself in, and it had taken the yellow paladin showing back up for him to find enough direction to try climbing out. 

He'd had no idea that there were so many layers to human 'families', and that these were the things invoked in the word 'home'. Galra was much simpler.

Hunk explains to him the concept of mothers - "Gotha," Kāthakkan says, when Hunk wants to know 'what he has', "a holder-carrier" - and fathers - "Imhath" - and how they all stay together in one place, one 'home', and that the progeny leave and come back all the time, that the mentality regarding staying together or being apart is different between every house, every region. 

"Is this your home?" Kāthakkan asks, because it seems to fit the parameters, but Hunk doesn't say anything for a long time, so he moves on.

"On Galra, it is one... parent, that raises the litter. They negotiate. If they are from different classes, the one of the higher class takes the spawn. Or they are given to other places to raise." It was to secure a higher number of living Galra children after the thousand years of Thinning, but that Kāthakkan keeps to himself. Galran history belongs to the Galra themselves, not to jailors. 

This catches Hunk's attention. "You have siblings?" He asks, and it takes a moment for Kāthakkan to remember that he means blood relations from the same litter. 

It's blurry, but he remembers the feel of other small bodies curled close to his. More vivid is the memory of wide yellow eyes and blood thick in his mouth. "Had, yes."

Hunk looks at him then, with his open, readable, human face, and says nothing. There is nothing he can say. For Kāthakkan it his past, yes, but it is  _the past_ , and there is little loneliness in a world where the majority of litters don't live past their fifth year. 

Galrans are a hearty people, with few diseases that are fatal to them, and Kāthakkan doesn't need to wonder how they keep their numbers balanced  _just so_. It is better to not think about it at all than to look at every Galran soldier and see the phantoms of their siblings at their backs.

.x.

Hunk leaves, eventually, taking Kāthakkan's old food with him and promising more to make up for missing a meal when 'breakfast' rolls around. The guilt that gnaws at him is - unwanted, at best. He doesn't understand it; there's no reason for him to feel guilty at all when all he did was use his knowledge of Haggar's favorite laboratory on the flagship to end what could have become much more gruesome. There are few similarities between Shiro and any of Kāthakkan's previous opponents, Galran or alien, and he shouldn't feel like provoking him into action - action Kāthakkan knew was a possibility - and then negating that action was in any way reprehensible.

 _I was in control_ , he tells himself, curled up on the floor.  _I was in control_.

When he finally falls into sleep it is fitful, full of voices calling out -  _crying out_ , his name. 

He can't tell, when he wakes, if they were saying  _Keith_ or  _Kāthiik._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kāthiik is a call back to the name convo in chapter 5, before the training montage. Think of it like a cutesy version of Kāthakkan, like something little!Galra!Keith would be called by his little galra peers (waits to be stoned). Let me know if I should tag for anything, I tried to cover it all before I posted, but I can't always be sure.
> 
> If you want to chat with me about VLD things and writing, etc, I'm super down! You can find me on tumblr @ morethanthedark, my ask box is open. ALSO: if you want to submit prompts for this 'verse or Paradigm Shift I'm SUPER DOWN. I have a lot of stuff on the backburners for PS, but this story doesn't have any real deviation and I'm curious about what you all would like to see happen that might not fit with this AU directly :3 Maybe you'll see some of it pop up in my Sheith Big Bang submission, who~~~ knows~~~ ;]


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